Heartfulness – Dr. Rosalind Pearmain

(Mindfulness is “the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment..” )( Wikipedia)

Heartfulness is a way of cultivating connection outwardly with the world through my heart centre and inwardly with the ground of being within. I start by learning to drop my awareness softly from the active zone I sense in my head, down into the infinite space of the heart. It feels to be my deepest pulse of aliveness and it is responding to everything every moment, like radar. I have found that it is like a musical instrument inside me, a subtle organ that can resonate, attune, amplify and transmit delicate beauty and intimations from the divine source within. Whenever we feel deeply moved or stirred by life, it is our heart helping us to be reminded of our profound connection to existence.

With meditation, all of this inner space of the heart has opened into a feeling of infinity like the universe within. If I can be open in a pure and loving way towards the beloved within, then it is as if I have inner senses within the heart at a finer level than the grosser senses in my body. These can be directed to discerning the information that is being given in transmissions, to perceive more beautiful and transcendental domains of being; qualities of coherence, choir-like bliss, different manifestations of love as if it were a world in itself .Many times of course also what is there is beyond my understanding, only cognized as a glimpse, a taste, flavour, an elusive music that can hardly be heard.

Living heartfully means keeping in touch with the aliveness of the heart as much as possible, so that its more delicate responses can be heeded and followed. It could feel only as an intimation of lightness of warmth, of ease that will be indicating a direction or response to follow. But it is the first response to catch before I talk myself out of it with rationalisations and defensive complexities.

As a person teaching post graduate students, an interesting process occurred over some months. I realized the difference between teaching mentally and teaching from my heart. When I taught from my mind it was often too complicated and inaccessible. But when I taught from my heart, all my understanding and knowledge were integrated in a real and more accessible way of expression that could touch people. I did not ever really know what would come out, I had to let go and feel centred in my heart and openness to the group and then it would come.

Being in my heart on a tube in London showed me the difference between seeing my fellow passengers with a judgmental and categorizing external gaze, or suddenly shifting into a sense of compassion and a real feeling of sharing life and this journey together through our hearts.

To be more focused on heart awareness also opens us much more to suffering and the less bearable elements of current life in the world. Yet it does seem that there is a reason that the word courage and the heart are directly related. Somehow, this infinite space in the heart can expand to contain everything and hold opposites beside each other compassionately, although I feel it is a life work to do this.

Heartfulness is a kind of presence, a way of being present and open with a deep and steady spaciousness to receive you or whatever is here in this moment. It is like surrendering without resistance. It has helped infinitely: accompanying clients in psychotherapy through long, difficult hours, facing delays and emergencies that arise in living, even in yielding to either hot or cold weather, and getting through daunting tasks. It is a bit like reducing everything just to this one moment, followed by another moment, playing note by note in the music.

It is an infinite mystery, this heart, so responsive, so integrative, and so precise in all domains of feeling – knowing. The more we live within its realms the more we are aligned with our source and with a bigger wisdom. Above all it is a place of warmth and joy, like the hearth in a home, it is the source of cheer and lightness, meaning and soul, the real domain of human human beings.

Dr. Rosalind Pearmain is a Visiting Lecturer in Psychotherapy at Regents University and has worked with a wide variety of groups of adults and young people for most of her life. She began practising meditation in this system in 1976 and lives in Oxfordshire